If you’ve checked the Tech section of the news lately, you might have come across an issue that had IT departments scrambling across the country. Lenovo, a top manufacturer of personal computers and Windows devices the past couple years, had begun bundling a software called Superfish. The breakdown for our most commonly received questions concerning this software is below:

What’s Superfish?

When Superfish was first discovered, people initially thought it was just an annoying, previously installed bit of software. Many computers come with extra software pre-installed by the manufacturer (typically referred to, politely, as crapware). But the more that engineers looked into Superfish, the scarier it got.

Superfish works through the use of false certificates, which can provide a hacker or other malicious user to use a Man-in-the-Middle attack. What could that be? Well, if you're connecting to your banking at a coffee shop, another user could pretend to be the bank, and pass along your information at the same time, keeping it for their future use. Obviously, this is a major problem.

Do I Have Superfish?

Unless you happened to install Superfish on your own, the likeliest way for it to be on your computer was for you to have purchased a Lenovo laptop or other computer recently. It's a reason we've had many customers looking for Lenovo computer repair recently.

What Should I Do If I Have Superfish?

Bring your computer to experts and they'll be able to remove it / prevent its false certificates from causing further issues. If you're in the Harvey, LA area, Wisp is right at 1901 Manhattan Boulevard.

How Can I Protect Myself in the Future?

Sadly, if the software comes pre-installed like Lenovo's did, there's little the average consumer can do. There were thousands if not millions of PCs out there whose users needed Lenovo computer repair, but they didn't realize it then. To improve the odds, though, make sure you have anti-virus and anti-malware software installed an up to date at all times.